


Party in the Palace

by Trillsabells



Series: The Door Opened [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Mind Palace, drunken debauchery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-27
Updated: 2014-03-27
Packaged: 2018-01-17 06:08:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1376662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trillsabells/pseuds/Trillsabells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It looked as though someone had been having a party in his mind palace. But as he made his way through the painfully bright corridors he began to notice a pattern; the destruction increased the closer he got to his relationship corridor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Party in the Palace

**Author's Note:**

> This is the Companion piece to Logical Thought but can be read standalone. Although that fic is probably better if read first.

It looked as though someone had been having a party in his mind palace. Not the formal type of party with bowties and champagne that he remembered his parent throwing when he was a child. Or even the occasional small party with stilted conversation and too much alcohol that John had thrown at Baker Street when he had still lived there. But more like the aftermath of a party he had once been called to for a case.

It wasn’t often his services were required after a party; murders at parties were far rarer than many people thought. Those ridiculous so called ‘detectives’ John always insisted – used to insist at least – watching on TV like Miss Marple (a highly suspicious character in Sherlock’s opinion) and Poirot (really, did anyone buy that accent and speech pattern?) that were always attending dinner parties and stumbling upon murders really skewed the view on such things. In reality there were accidents, alcohol or accidental food poisonings, and a build-up of resentments that might lead to a more carefully planned murder later, but a knife in the back amongst the balloons was generally uncommon.

In this particular case there had been three bodies found tucked away in various corners of a large house in North London after a party at which nearly three hundred teenagers had attended. It had been one of those Facebook parties; mistakenly advertised online and filled with strangers. He had been called in when initial police enquiries could find no connection between any of the three victims – all of whom had had their throat very neatly and quietly slit open with a broken bottle – with either the host or each other.

When he arrived he instantly estimated the destruction would cost tens of thousands of pounds to repair. Breakages, graffiti, structural damage, a small fire and water damage had all been preserved for his viewing. Now it seemed as though it had been recreated inside his own head.

Admittedly, the structural damage seemed to be minimal and most of the cupboards and drawers where he kept his mental notes were intact, but the windows were cracked, the curtains torn, the furniture overturned, the walls stained, and empty bottles and measuring flasks clicked against his feet as he explored. His ash data was out for some reason and in disarray. A graph on alcohol intake was pasted against a door, but while the first few bars were neat and logical towards the end of the time bar it became smudged and sloppy. The words Madonna and Pretty Lady were spray painted on the wall, and the stench of alcohol was everywhere.

As he made his way through the painfully bright corridors he began to notice a pattern. While his work rooms were largely intact and long term memories were generally untouched, the destruction increased the closer he got to his relationship corridor. This was where the highest concentration of breakages was; shelves off their brackets, wallpaper torn down and the carpet had some very questionable stains. But Molly’s lab door was untouched, and running his hand along the glass in Lestrade’s office door didn’t find even the slightest chip. There was a sock in front of Mrs Hudson’s bead curtain, but otherwise there was no sign of any disturbance, and likewise, Mycroft’s ostentatious study door was shut firmly, although a pair of shoes was discarded nearby, as well as a shirt a little further along the corridor. John’s door, however, was off its hinges revealing strange flashes of different coloured lights in the darkness beyond, and the trail of clothes - a pair of trousers, a belt and a pair of boxer-briefs – lead right up to it.

Following the trail he pushed aside the wreckage of the door and ducked into the reception room beyond.

He had recently renovated this room to fit in all the wedding plans, but now all the seating arrangements were missing and instead every inch of the large yellow room was covered with moving projections of memories of John and him. He couldn’t help but gape as he stared around at them all. There was him drinking with John in a bar. Here the two of them lying on the floor of 221b giggling. There John’s hand on his knee. Here John holding him back as he tried to hit someone. There the two of them lying side by side as John ran his fingers through his hair. Here John leaning in to say something to him in a loud club. There the two of them lying on 221b’s floor and him kissing John’s smiling mouth. Here them drinking together in 221b. There him pushing into a naked, panting John lying on his bed. Here them lying on the staircase talking about reputations. There him kissing John against the kitchen wall while simultaneously attempting – rather unsuccessfully – to pull off John’s jumper. Here John crying out as he was pounded into, “Sherlock, I lo-, I lov-, God, yes, Sherlock!”. There him tumbling into John’s lap as he reached for the Rizla paper on John’s forehead and knocking them both to the floor. Here him sucking a mark into John’s shoulder. There John lying against his pillow, smiling at him and saying, “I think I love you, isn’t that weird?”.

In the centre of the room, surrounded by all those wonderful sights, all those amazing sounds, was a bed. His bed where he was still sleeping, face mashed into the pillow. Behind him was John, awake and staring at him, expression unrecognisable. Of course his expression was unrecognisable, he didn’t know what it was, did he. To do that, he thought as he paced straight towards the bed and reached towards himself, he was going to have to-

He woke with a jolt and quickly flipped over so he could see John.

Shock, that was John’s expression. But his appearance was much more ravaged than he had appeared in the mind palace. His hair was all over the place, there were pillow creases on his cheek and a deep purple bruise was blooming on his shoulder. He looked beautiful; so utterly perfect in his bed that it seemed such a shame he could only remember flashes of their first time. Still, he thought as he reached across and pulled John into a passionate kiss, there was one way to fix that.


End file.
